Passion Work Retreat

I’ve been on hiatus for the past week from blogging, but now that break is almost officially over though, it is time for me to start getting things back in gear. I hadn’t planned to be on hiatus, but I have a rule where I don’t blog if it would mean leaving family/friend time unnecessarily and with it being Thanksgiving break, things got busy.

However, by no means did I stop thinking. It was quite the opposite actually, there were many occasions where someone would say “Anya stop thinking,” but I’m not very good at that. It can be a problem sometimes actually. A problem I have not yet been able to solve for.

In fact sitting next to me at this very moment is my notebook flipped open to the page with notes from our Google Hangout with Grant Lichtman and notes about my AP Lang portfolio that I have been working on putting together, at least 40 notecards most of which have sentences describing one of my past blog posts, a passion board with sticky notes and a sharpie for both iVenture and AP Lang work (in truth it is the beginnings of these becoming more closely into 1 related topic), a white board calendar with all of the dates I need to keep in mind, and another white board with all of the big things I need to get done and what my hopeful schedule for today was in order to work on them.

But alas, this all makes me sound like I was much more productive this week than I truly feel I was. I mean I didn’t even blog. I didn’t go through my list of things to do. I did work some on all of the above as well as coaching gymnastics camp, finishing the choreographing for 2 acro routines, memorizing theater lines, looking and taking notes on a bunch of potential colleges, and studying a little for the SAT which I take this coming weekend. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if did more than most students this week, but it still doesn’t feel like enough knowing how much time I also spent just looking up random stuff online and watching gymnastics videos and Netflix and playing games.

Does it ever? Does it ever feel like enough?

Kat and I were texting earlier about how we both don’t feel like we got as much done as we intended on getting done this week. It seems that all we look forward to is having a little time because that’s when “we’ll get to work on the stuff we want to be doing.” The problem is that we are so busy the rest of the time that when a little time comes our way what we “want to be doing” become simply relaxing. Which isn’t nor should it be a bad thing. We all need time to reboot and “stop thinking” for a little sometimes. The hard part is finding the “free time” to use as “work time,” and being around others that are still in “reboot mode” doesn’t make it easy.

While Kat and I were texting (actually I ended up having a similar conversation with a few others as well, it was kind of on my mind a lot today), I brought up the concept of a writers retreat. Ironically this thought came to me because of a TV show I had been getting caught up in this week. Authors, trying to write a book typically, will sometimes go on a retreat for an extended amount of time in order to clear their mind of other distractions and just write. Then write some more. Then keep writing because they have that time!

Sometimes I wish I could go on a similar retreat. Not just for writing but just to have time dedicated for working, but for passion work. Ideally it would be great if it could be my school for a week. Because truthfully, it’s really hard to spend what would be break time with family trying to work all of the time. The whole reason we have breaks is so that we can reboot and have some family time without worrying about work so much. School is work time, so what if we just changed what that work was; not to mention make it for a longer period of time just in a new location.

Sometimes I’ll say I need to go do work and my family will react with “What work didn’t you do already that’s due tomorrow?” Then I have to explain how it isn’t actually due in the typical school sense which is why I haven’t finished it, because passion work can’t really be fully finished, but it does need to be worked on.

Finding time for passion work when that passion work isn’t yet your “work” work is really difficult. So sometimes I wish I could just go on a passion work retreat to dedicate a large amount of time to the work that isn’t “due” but is important and needs time without interruptions and distractions (many of which I cause myself when I go into “break” mode).

I think it would even be okay for a few people to on this retreat with me as long as they too were in “passion work mode” because then we could hold each other responsible and get feedback from each other even while on retreat.

Anyway break is over tomorrow and thus work begins. With midterms only two weeks away plus all of the big events I have coming up, things are about to get crazy and I think I’ll need some rest.